A Mermaid's Ransom (29 page)

His daughter was in her favorite oversized sleep shirt, her shoulders visible over the warm pile of blankets on top of her. She was curled on her side. Dante was with her, curved behind her body, his arm over her chest, large hand cupped under her upper arm as she held on to his forearm in her sleep. Fortunately, he appeared to be wearing jeans, and of course Mina's silver collar.

Clustered around Alexis's front was a plethora of the stuffed animals normally on the floor. Plush ponies, puppies, kittens, bears and Pooh characters were grouped at her abdomen, legs and around her head. Dante's other arm was under it and she clasped his hand on that side, closing the circle between them.

Jonah noted the split on her lip, and knew that was likely where the blood splatter had come from.

"I didn't do that."

He shifted his gaze to meet Dante's. The hellfire color glowed in the darkness like a demon's. He'd spoken low, so Alexis didn't stir.

"I know." Jonah forced out the words. "She told me she got in the way."

"Yes. And no. She was trying to help, and did not stay where I told her to."

Yes, that happened. He didn't have to look far to know exactly where his daughter had gotten
that
trait from.

Dante's watchfulness suggested he was ready to leap up if Jonah gave him cause. Lex stirred restlessly, making a questioning sound in her sleep. He murmured to her, one hand stroking her fingers, and hers tightened on him. She subsided.

Jonah studied her. "She's all right then? No injuries."

"Bruised only. She said nothing was broken, and that she would know if it was. She believes that, but I do not know if it is the truth."

A reminder that the bastard knew everything that went through Alexis's head, making her completely vulnerable to him. Jonah's jaw tightened. "She's likely right, but tell her I want her to see Raphael or one of his healers tomorrow, to be sure. I will be checking to see if she receives the message, and obeys it."

"I will make sure she does."

Jonah indulged the visual of twisting his perfect face into the shape of wet clay, snapping his spine like kindling. "You may have inadvertently marked her as your servant," he said, just as low, "and Lady Lyssa may have told you that meant certain things, but know this. She is not yours. She makes her own choices."

"I know." Dante brought his attention to her face, as if she was a puzzle to him. "You give her choices, though you could easily take them away. Because she is your daughter and you . . . love her." When he looked at Jonah, something equally menacing entered his gaze. "What if that gets her killed? Is that something your love allows?"

"Here to now,
you
have been the greatest threat that's ever been made against her life. You took her against her will, and out of hatred and cowardice, not love."

Jonah cursed himself as, picking up on the rising tensions, Lex stirred, her lids opening. She took in the arrangement of animals in front of her first. With some surprise, Jonah realized she hadn't done that, for she giggled, reaching out to touch several of them. "Were you keeping me barricaded?"

"They seem to comfort you, and make you laugh. So I put them around you, like a Protection Spell." Dante cleared his throat. "It is the same principle. Your father is here."

"I know." She smiled sleepily, stretching out her hand. "I knew you had to come by and check on me. Worried old bird."

"You and your mother have an equal lack of respect for my age." Jonah came to her then, taking her hand. She kept her other around Dante's forearm, holding them both connected to her.

"It's because you get to look like you're thirty your entire life, while she and I will eventually get wrinkled and saggy. Unless my angel side is stronger than the mermaid." She winked and pushed herself up. She was stiff, he could tell by the sudden flinch. When Dante helped lift her to an upright position, Jonah dropped to a knee by the bed to accept Lex's embrace. Her arms slid around Jonah's shoulders, Dante drawing back as Jonah returned the hug. She smelled of lavender and vanilla, only a faint trace of Dark One magic fire and sulfurous smoke remaining in her hair.

"I had a bath a little while ago," she said, as if reading his mind. "But it's probably going to take another to get it all out. I'm all right, Pyel. Dante was amazing. One minute there was a vampire, and the next, just a big pile of ash."

Jonah met Dante's gaze. "Fortunate that he was there, then. David confirmed Jacob spoke to the territory overlord. There should be no more attacks."

"Good." Conscious of the antipathetic feelings coming from them both, Lex suppressed a sigh. She understood why they felt as they did, but it was difficult to accept. It's only been a day, she reminded herself. So rarely in her life had there been discord with or between those she cared about. She knew all about dysfunctional families, though. Just like with those, she found her heart aching. Knowing there was nothing she could do for it without the passage of time only made it harder to accept.

"Pyel, is there any other threat out there right now?"

That brought their focus back to her, though that was the only benefit she could see for the new worry she'd be bringing to her father.

"None that I know of. The Goddess has no enemies actively moving against Her here at this point. Why?"

"I don't know. This is crazy, but earlier . . . I felt the vampire, right before he came upon us. But even before that, when we left the community center, I felt something different. I guess it could have been another vampire, but after feeling his energy, it wasn't the same. I really couldn't classify it. It was somewhat familiar, but in a twisted way, you know. Or not twisted." She frowned, thinking, "Different, and the same. Goddess, I'm not making any sense."

Dante inclined his head at Jonah's glance. "She is not. I am not seeing it any clearer in her mind."

"Thanks," she said dryly, and elbowed him in the stomach. His brows lifted.

"What is that for?"

"Patronizing a woman is never a good idea," David noted from the door. "If she has cosmic power, it can be even worse. Trust me."

Alexis smiled at them both, but felt David's distress. "Are you all right?"

"Fine," David said, giving her a nod that was courteous but warded off further questions. "Mina is having a more prickly day than usual. She suggested I make myself scarce for a few hours or she'd disintegrate the universe to be rid of me."

"Oh." Alexis hoped her godmother wasn't serious. "Well, since you're all here, and we're all up, I can make us some tea and an early breakfast."

"No, you need more rest." Jonah put a firm hand on her shoulder before she would have emerged from the bed. Dante's arm tightened on her waist, reinforcing the same message.

"But I want--"

"No, Seabird," Jonah said, in a tone that brooked no disobedience. "Can you tell me anything else about what you sensed?"

"No," she said, giving up and settling back. "But later today, I'm sure I'll figure out what it was. It may have just been something unrelated to us."

At least, that was what she hoped. With Dante pressed against her back, and her father in front, she'd never felt so safe.

She played with her father's fingers as Dante eased her back down on her side, drowsily pleased when he started stroking her hair. "Tomorrow I'm taking Dante to the Conservancy. We'll be there most of the day, okay? Give Myel a hug and tell her everything's going well."

"All right. Sleep deep, Seabird." Jonah ran his knuckles along her cheek, Dante pausing so their hands did not touch. As her eyes drooped, and she succumbed again, a light smile on her face, Jonah's dark eyes slid up to meet Dante's. The two males held that position for a weighted moment until Jonah rose and moved without another word toward the door.

"Angel?"

He paused, glanced over his shoulder. Dante stared at him through the darkness. "I have no interest in causing her harm."

"That's not the same as being willing to do anything to keep her safe," Jonah responded. His tone was dangerously quiet. "If we have to send you back, you'll fight to the death to prevent it. Which means you will sacrifice my daughter's life."

"I did not intend to bind her to me with the marks."

"Your intentions mean nothing to me, vampire. Every action has a consequence. Her mother risked her life to bear her." The power of Jonah's anger ratcheted up, so that the heat in the room increased exponentially. "There is nothing I would not do to keep her safe and happy, even if I had to spend an eternity in Hell to make it happen."

"You can only say that because you haven't spent an eternity in Hell," Dante spat back.

"Jonah, don't. Leave it be, for now." David brushed his arm as he felt his commander's fury rise. Jonah's sword was far too accessible in its back harness. The young angel wondered if Lex was still awake, and, like him, waiting tensely to see where this would go.

"Step carefully, vampire. And remember what I told you. You don't deserve her. She sure as Hades doesn't deserve you." Turning abruptly, Jonah strode out the bedroom door.

David waited until he heard Jonah leave the town house. Dante was watching him in the darkness, but David delayed several heartbeats before he spoke to the vampire himself, keeping his voice low.

"He cut his heart out of his chest, gave it to a Dark One army, and risked eternal slavery to them to keep his mate safe. Perhaps it isn't the same, but he's got a ballpark idea. Plus, he's right."

When the shadows of bad memories moved within him, David knew Dante saw it in his face, from the sharpening of the vampire's gaze. "When you love someone completely, you'll do anything to protect them, even if you sacrifice your soul. Because if you don't, you destroy your soul anyway."

Twenty-four

ALEXIS noticed Dante was quieter than usual when she rose. He indicated he had no need for blood, but he made her eat her normal breakfast. As he sampled her scrambled organic eggs and arranged her Cheerios in various patterns on the table, she watched him, hoping for a clue, but he fended off her tactful attempts to analyze his mood.

He told her David had returned with several sets of secondhand clothing in Dante's size while she slept. But when she caught him staring at the clothes laid on the sofa as if he was somewhere deep in his mind, not looking at the clothes at all, she chose the direct approach, closing her hand on his on the table. "What's the matter?"

"What does the word
deserve
mean? Can one word have two meanings?"

Lex considered that. "I guess it can.
Deserve
is a tricky one. It means what someone has earned. What they've worked for . . . Like being born in a Dark One world. You did nothing to deserve that, because you were an innocent baby. But because of the twenty years you spent planning your escape, you'd done enough to earn, or deserve, a chance to be here."

"
Hmm
."

He turned his attention back to her, as if seeing her for the first time that morning. She'd pulled her hair back from her face with a barrette, and wore the Conservancy T-shirt over her swimsuit. It had a manatee on the front and
volunteer
embroidered on the pocket. She'd put dark jeans with it and white canvas sneakers with cartoon-style manatee sneaker locks on the laces. He stopped there, studying them. What went through his mind dispelled the shadows emanating from him, easing her concern.

"Before you make some remark about how cute I look and I have to deck you, we should go. We're supposed to look approachable," she added, "especially for the kids."

He chose a dark blue T-shirt to go with black jeans, and she found a navy blue Conservancy staff bill cap for him to wear. At first, she encouraged him to twist his hair under it, but it was far too thick. He fingered it. "I would blend more if I cut this."

"No," she said immediately. Biting her lip at his raised brow, she admitted, "Okay, you might. You're so striking, the hair just enhances the whole I-am-a-famous-rock-star thing."
But I really like your hair.
She gave herself a mental shake. She'd woken up this morning, determined to put aside the feelings, which could hamper him learning how to be a part of this world, and she was already falling down on the job.

He was looking at her closely. "Hair grows back. If I do cut it, it can be grown long again, to please you. As a vampire, it grows far faster to a certain length."

She nodded, but when she picked up her keys and billfold, he closed his hand over her wrist and tugged her to him. He bent his head so his lips were close to her mouth. When she looked up at him, several strands of that hair had fallen and curtained one side of her face, closing them in a quiet space together.

"Tonight, I will take my time and savor every inch of you. I wanted you to rest last night. But I will not wait much longer to have you under me again."

Then he slid his hand to her nape and brought her to her toes so he could tease her lips apart, score her tongue lightly with his teeth, holding her with one hand only as she clutched the front of his shirt for balance.

Even as she was swept away by it, there was a strange quality to that kiss, as if he was seeking to pull something from her, needing something she wasn't sure how to offer. He dissolved that worry into heat, though, when he found the line of her swimsuit bottoms through the thin denim and traced them. After that provocative caress, he delved into the depression where her bottom curved under and met the juncture of her thighs. When he cupped her over that sensitive area, she gasped into his mouth, leaned harder into his body. "Dante . . ."

Slipping to the front of her jeans, he opened them and found her sensitive sex. She had a brief flash that she was going to be really late, and then decided she was wrong, for he was stroking her clit with unerring accuracy and tempo. Because of the loosened waistband, he slid his other hand down the back of the jeans. She jerked as his fingers went between her buttocks and began to tease the rim there, working her between the two pressures so she was shamelessly stroking herself on his hands, leaning her forehead against his shoulder. The soft cries caught in her throat gained in strength.

"Come for me," he ordered. "Gush against my hand, Alexis. Let me feel your fluids."

She spasmed just at the words, and clutched his skin beneath the shirt. In a matter of seconds, he'd robbed her of thought, splitting her between mindless pleasure and on-the-edge-of-a-precipice terror. It was scary, to free-fall so quickly at his touch, as if she had no will of her own.

I am your will.
He thrust three fingers inside of her, rubbing, and she cried out, biting the shirt and his flesh beneath. He growled his approval. Two of his fingers in the back slowly pushed into her virgin rear entry, slow, tickling, teasing.
I have not yet taken you here. I may do that tonight, after you make my cock slick with your warm, willing mouth.

"Oh . . ." Her guttural response was mouthed against his shirt, heated and wet, for her body was shuddering. She couldn't have remained upright except he had her pressed against her kitchen table, which was braced against the nook wall. Her knee was on one of the chairs, and he brought a second one near with a quick hook and jerk of his foot. He lifted her other knee up on it so she was on her knees on the two chairs, spread for him over the open space. The jeans constricted, pressing the seams against his hand, which drove his fingers deeper into her.

With a cry, she shattered, her release flooding as he'd ordered, making his hand that much more slick as he pumped the fingers inside of her, continuing to tease her anal area as well. As she bucked, she followed the orgasm on a white-water rapids ride through her spiraling mind, a kaleidoscope of colors and images. Her other hand had fallen to the waistband of his jeans, the belt holding them. Unbidden, she imagined him spanking her with that belt, for disobeying him yesterday. She'd be bent over his knees, her bottom pale and red both from the stripes, her cunt wet and pink for him, needing to be filled and claimed by his cock.

Those weren't her thoughts, she realized. They were his, planted in her mind. He was letting her see his desires, his demands, in the way he thought and spoke of them. Instead of being revolted, she was short of breath, her sex pulsing with another hard aftershock that had her pushing her head harder against his chest as she rode it out.

When she was at last done, her moans having left wet spots on his shirt, he slowly withdrew his hands, caressing her. He made her taste her fluids on the hand he'd had inside her sex, and she suckled his fingers shamelessly, earning a dangerous growl from his own chest that made her wonder if they were going to be even later.

But he drew back at last. Instead of letting her do it, he adjusted her swimsuit, tucked her shirt back in and zipped the jeans, slipping the button closed while his mouth rested on the crown of her head. His arm slid around her, holding her while she trembled and shuddered. She realized she was not as steady on her feet this morning as she'd supposed.

"I think I need a muffin," she whispered. "One of those really gooey ones with chocolate chips and a million calories."

"A good idea."

"And I should probably change--"

"No." He lifted her chin then. The motion made her realize how hard he was, pressed against her belly. When she would have sought him, he shook his head, caught her hands. "I want you soaked. I want you to remember my hand there, for however many hours we are at this place, and think of no other male. They will smell your scent and know you have been pleasured by the one who has claimed you. Who will take you tonight as I wish to do now."

Primal words she should brush off as belonging to his frame of thinking, not her own. So why did she respond so passionately to them, as if they were a mirror of her deepest desires?

"Humans don't smell that well, really." She cleared her throat. "But don't worry, I'll remember. If that was a prelude, you might kill me before we get to tonight. Slow, you said?"

"Very slow," he confirmed.

Though Dante suspected it would take a great act of will to wait until then, let alone go slow. Each time he had the desire to touch her like this, the urgency was such he couldn't slow down. He knew he'd never had anything like her, but for that reason alone he wanted to find the discipline to slow down. He wanted to peel all of her clothes off, lay her out on her bed. Perhaps find some way to bind her wrists and ankles so that she had to surrender everything to him, and he could devote hours to tasting her skin, caressing it with his fingers, pleasuring her over and over. Giving her water and food from his mouth.

Had Lyssa been right about a vampire's nature, the way they felt toward their servants? It had been one of many things she'd discussed with him, alone in her study, but now the memory of that specific discussion sprang up into his mind, disturbing him with the truth laid out before him.

"YOU'VE never had a human servant, have you?" Lyssa crossed her legs in a whisper of movement, her long-nailed fingers resting with casual elegance on her knee. "Mina said that Alexis believed you marked her as an accident, that you didn't really know how a marking occurred."

He was not comfortable admitting error or weakness in front of anyone, particularly this mysterious stranger. He shrugged, a noncommittal answer.

"You are protective of her, but there is a destructive streak to you as well. You need to guard against that, and not just for the obvious reason that the angel and the witch will destroy you if you harm that child."

"She is not a child. I have met children."

"She is very young, compared to my age. And a sexually mature woman, or male, for that matter"--she gave him a meaningful glance--"is quite often just a child in an adult body. Don't interrupt."

She leaned back in her chair. "Vampires have certain personality traits, Dante. They differ from humans, angels and mermaids in that respect, and it is one of the reasons none of them are entirely comfortable around us, except for the rare human who wishes to bond with one of us, who becomes a servant by choice." At his shift, she nodded. "Your servant did not choose, no more than you were aware you were making the choice for her. Fortunately, the girl seems devoted to your well-being. It may grow into a true master-servant relationship, or it may not. She may be merely a way station for you, though letting a marked servant go has its own problems. We'll cross that bridge if we get to it.

"However, in a true vampire-servant relationship, you will dominate her, sexually as well as many other ways." She gave him a quelling glance before he could speak again. "I am not suggesting a course of action, but a simple fact. It's innate to us, and therefore essential to how we order our world. I've already seen you demonstrate that irresistible compulsion to ensure she submits to you. The surrender of the servant's body and blood, heart and soul, is required by any vampire Master or Mistress. Unfortunately, as you've also already demonstrated, for a young vampire, it is a very dangerous compulsion, one that has often resulted in a dead servant."

Dante's gaze sharpened on her. "I have no reason to kill Alexis."

"But she may end up dead through your ignorance or actions, which is just as bad." Lyssa held his gaze, her own relentless. "It's another reason I strongly encourage you to come to me when these thirty days are over. I can help you learn to manage your compulsions, compulsions that may be exacerbated by your other blood, making them that more dangerous."

She rose, bringing their meeting to an end. "In the meantime, the best advice I can give you is to listen to what her soul tells you. With careful practice, you can delve that deeply into a third-marked servant. It will let you know if you are asking too much or pushing too hard. You cannot listen to her words or only her mind, because humans are often confused by their own feelings. But their souls will never lie to you."